Microsoft Game Studios

Redmond is a city in King County, Washington, United States, located 16 miles east of Seattle. The population was 54,144 at the 2010 census, up from 45,256 in 2000. Redmond is best known as the home of Microsoft and Nintendo of America. With an annual bike race on city streets and the state's... only velodrome, Redmond is also known as "the bicycle capital of the Northwest". However, its main form of transportation is the automobile . The city is predominantly suburban in character. Redmond has a historic downtown with many individually owned businesses, adjacent to the modern downtown Redmond. Due to its large population of highly paid technology workers, especially those of Microsoft, Redmond is an affluent community. Based on per capita income, Redmond ranks 20th of the 522 areas in the state of Washington to be ranked. Native Americans had settled in the Redmond area 400 years ago, and the first European settlers arrived in the 1870s. Luke McRedmond filed a Homestead Act claim for land next to the Sammamish Slough on September 9, 1870, and the following year Warren Perrigo took up land adjacent to him.
more

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, United States that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS... in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. Microsoft would also come to dominate the office suite market with Microsoft Office. The company has diversified in recent years into the video game industry with the Xbox and its successor, the Xbox 360 as well as into the consumer electronics and digital services market with Zune, MSN and the Windows Phone OS. The ensuing rise of stock in the company's 1986 initial public offering made an estimated three billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees .
more